Bill Cammack » stalking

E-Stalking [Part 4]

Bill Cammack — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:07:19 +0000

I dropped my e-Stalking series in 2008.

At the time, I was talking about asynchronously getting to know someone by reading their blog posts, listening to their podcasts, watching their videos & live streams and coming to your own conclusion about who they are, what they’re like and what they like to do without them ever knowing that you exist.

e-Stalking makes perfect sense because people tend to share what they care about online to the degree that they’re willing to be judged by what they wrote. Trust Me.. You can learn way more about someone in 20 minutes of consuming their media than you can during 20 minutes of banter with them and three other people standing around at an IRL social function.

I’ve personally been amazed by and appreciative of the number of people that have complimented me on my dating, social media or video blogging. Some of the experiences I’ve had with this which stand out to me to this very day are with my Bre P., Tim S., Jessica V., Corinne & Meg, and my own cousin whom I had no idea read blogs at all, much less mine. I can’t explain the personally-world-changing feelings that I’ve received from those particular genuine, heartfelt interactions/reactions to something I do because I like to do it and because I WANT to do it. Thanks again, to all the readers, whether you’re lurkers or regulars like Fishingrod, Frank, Steve, C-Jay, etc.

Fast Forward two years to present-day 2010 and e-Stalking has evolved from being strictly online to also being offline (f2f, IRL) thanks to location-based services (LBS).

A LBS allows you to inform people where you are at a particular time, usually via GPS location from your cell phone. This is only slightly different from Twittering where you are or having someone else Twitter that they’re hanging out with you because there’s currently no location confirmation on Twitter. You can say you’re at Tavern On The Green (in Manhattan) when you’re actually in The Bronx. The LBS marks down what was said, who said it, where they were when they said it and how long ago they were in that location. Obviously, you can see the delectable stalkability in these apps. >:D

Practical Applications

Other than working for clients, just about everything I do is on the fly. It’s rare that I know what I’ll be doing two hours from now because I never know what I want to do until I want to do it. I use LBS primarily to make exit decisions. If I know I’m leaving location A and heading for location B, I’ll check to see if anyone I want to catch up with IRL is in the area I’m leaving. This worked out for me just last week as a matter of fact, because I found out that Scott B., whom I’ve known of online for ages already was currently in a crowded party I was about to leave. Thanks to the LBS, I got to introduce myself to him IRL before bouncing to the next spot.

Another time was rather interesting because a female friend of mine “checked in” to a restaurant that was close to a spot I was leaving, so I passed by to say “Hi”. I actually walked by her because I was looking for a group and then on my way back out of the restaurant, I saw she was sitting at a small table with a dude… YIKES!!! :O .. A DATE!!! :D

So I tried to sneak out past them, but didn’t make it. She asked me to sit down with them, so (sorry dude! :D) I sat for about 3 1/2 minutes, which felt like 20 minutes so as not to dis her invitation but not to trample his date at the same time. Ain’t Goin’ Out. Like. That! ;)

BTW.. I do this all the time.. Not trample on guy’s dates, but check my surroundings for people I want to catch up with, so if you don’t like it, go ahead and delete me now. thxkbai :D

foursquare.com/BillCammack
gowalla.com/users/BillCammack

The time that prompted me to write this post happened a bunch of months ago, though I’m just getting around to writing about it now. Damien B. & Owen S. had checked in to Lily’s Bar/Restaurant at Roger Smith Hotel, which happened to be located between my current points A & B, and “shouted” (announced via text message on the LBS) a tweetup.

When I rolled in, both guys said “hi” to me and one of them asked me who I was there to meet up with. I replied “You”, which caused them to look puzzled. :D We then got into a discussion about stalking and how people don’t understand the potential safety issues of announcing where you are and/or what you’re doing. Of course, this is 2000x more important for females, since they tend to have more fans/stalkers than males as well of this false sense of security they’ve derived from believing that everyone subscribes to “Men should never hit women”.

Who’s Paying Attention?

I currently have 189 Gowalla contacts and 381 Foursquare contacts, mostly overlapping, so let’s say that when I check in somewhere, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see one or more out of ~450 people show up to the same location. That’s slightly exaggerated because lots of my contacts are currently in other states or countries and can’t just roll up wherever I happen to be. Even if we take that number down to 100 people, that’s STILL a lot to consider every time you use a LBS.

On top of your personal followers, there are the people that follow friends of yours that you’re hanging out with. You might not check in, but if your friend checks in and “shouts” that they’re with *you*, you’re spotted. If they Twitter and @reply you, you’re spotted. If they twitpic, yfrog, Ustream, Qik, Livestream or Bambuser you, you’re spotted. Same thing goes to a degree with Loopt, Latitude & Brightkite.

Also, let’s not forget that a lot of people push each status update to several other sites, so when they shout you out on Twitter, it goes to their Facebook and Friendfeed and Buzz and everywhere else on the planet where they feel people are paying attention to them.. So while you THINK you’re secluded somewhere having private drinks, you’re really sitting out in the open, electronically…. virtually…

There are two obvious ways around this.. 1) Don’t add anybody on LBS that you wouldn’t want to come see you if you checked in somewhere, and 2) don’t check in. If you’re serious about your privacy for a hangout, make sure everyone knows ahead of time that it’s a NOBLOG blackout. Everybody goes electronically off the grid until it’s over or everyone elects to make it a public event. Depending on the situation, you might want to call a total media blackout (no mentions, no pictures, no video), because we all know that if nobody blogs it, it never happened. ;)

I finally got around to writing this because I read an article by Melissa Jun Rowley about stalkerism that she and acquaintances of hers have been victimized by. You should definitely check her post out if you want to hear some weird ish. Personally, I don’t take calls on MY OWN PHONE, so I’m damned sure not taking calls on restaurant & gym phones, but I guess that’s how some people roll. \o/

Fools Rush In

The bottom line is that every time someone comes up with new technology, people rush out to utilize it. When I’m new to a service or app, I immediately look for the people that have 10x or 100x the followers I have on it to see how they’re using it and what traps they’re falling in. I add that to my own in-the-trenches research and decide what I’m going to do.

Unfortunately, most people just aren’t into the nitty-gritty of how this stuff works for AND against you and they’re very happy to tell people “I’m eating a sandwich on 34th and 2nd” and then “I’m watching a movie on 42nd and 8th” all day long, for what reason I have no clue. Granted.. *MOST* of us aren’t popular enough that just because we said we were going somewhere, someone invites themselves to come hang out with us. Trust & Believe that it happens, it’s happened TO ME, and I have witnesses from all the way back in 2008, before LBS were even AVAILABLE, to 2010.

If you’re not willing to have someone show up at a party or event you’re attending, take evasive measures, (including telling your friends not to say you’re there) or eject from LBS entirely. Melissa mentions Personal Brand Promotion and Brand Loyalty as reasons to check in, but you can shout out events and show your support without even being there, like “MashBash is happening @ Roger Smith Hotel tonight!!!”. There’s no benefit to posting “I am currently at MashBash in RSH in the penthouse in the room to the left after you exit the elevators around the corner next to the snacks”.

It’s 2010 now. A lot of people that you know and hang out with are celebrities, whether they or you know it or not or whether you like it or not. Everybody that outputs Social Media is building communities of fans & detractors that face off against each other on the back-channel over something you said or did. You don’t have to be a movie star to get stalked. You don’t even have to do anything that YOU think is extraordinary. It’s all about what your Fans think is extraordinary about you and makes them gravitate towards you.

I know it sounds stupid and perhaps self-centered, but if you’re heavily involved in Social Media, it’s really in your best interest to Act As If you’re a celebrity, certainly not meaning being snobbish towards people, but certainly meaning taking the same precautions someone that *YOU* think is famous or interesting would take to attempt to ensure their own privacy and safety.

Remember… “Fan” is short for Fanatic.

E-Stalking [Part 1]

Bill Cammack — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 05:42:19 +0000

So I stopped by Melissa’s blog, and I’m skimming/reading her ideas, and I see this post called Stalking 101. The reason I decided to blog about reading her post is that she was blogging about exactly what I was doing at the time. :)

I decided to check out her reasons for googling people (searching for references to their names or sites they author or are a part of like, Bill, for instance :D) to see if they were similar to my own.

To paraphrase, here are her reasons:

1 ) Being an introvert (including potentially appearing “maladroit at small talk”)
2 ) Needing context for conversations
3 ) Wanting to ‘get to know someone’ before engaging them in “inspiring conversation”
4 ) Attempting to form a fairly complete picture of you based on your online thoughtstream
5 ) Giving the stalkee the respect of wanting to know more about them
6 ) Respecting the time you’ve spent in putting information about yourself on the net
7 ) Wanting to have a meaningful interaction with the stalkee IRL
8 ) Relieving them of redundantly explaining their life story

My reasons for e-stalking overlap with hers at several points, but I have a couple of different ones, which I’ll get to…

Another thing that was funny to me after I read Melissa’s post was that we had met each other “cold”… purely by accident. She happened to be standing with a group of friends of mine, and since I hadn’t met her before or seen her around, I introduced myself. I figured that even though I hadn’t seen her before, I’d be familiar with her twitter name, so I asked her what that was…. No dice. Never heard of that name before. :) So, now… Here I was, at a social media event, having ZERO point of reference for who she was. To me, this was like falling off a cliff into a chasm, with a cheap greenscreen effect to show me supposedly falling away from the camera. It was like a system shutdown. To illustrate how strange this was, I could have taken a rock and hit no less than 45 people that I knew in the same room with us. I mean, no walls between us at all, and I couldn’t draw ONE connection between her and any of them OR anybody else I knew on the social media scene. So the next question I had was something to the effect of:

“So… You’re from out of town?”

Which she wasn’t, which made me fall farther from the camera into the chasm. :) What I realize now is that I was doing what Melissa describes in her post. I was attempting to latch onto some sort of internet-based understanding of “who she was” in order to have some form of useful conversation with her. Once I drew a complete and absolute BLANK, I had no point of reference and probably seemed like I didn’t have anything to say to her. I’m sure I had lots to say to her, except as I mentioned in Chris Brogan’s post, “Five Levels of Social Conversation”, I’m not a small-talker. I’m interested in USEFUL conversation, and by now, I’m very used to knowing what conversation is useful to whom because of what they post to the net.

Anyway… A mutual friend standing in that group was already in social media contact with her, so I decided I was going to “quit while I was in the middle of nowhere” and just google her the next day. To her credit, she struck up a conversation later on, based on what was on my shirt and I found out that we shared a mutual interest. That’s always a good thing. :)

So it was really interesting to me that in the process of e-stalking her, I arrived at a post that talks about how she e-stalks people, and why. :D I thought it would be interesting (to me) to see where my reasons and Melissa’s paraphrased reasons overlap…

1 ) Being an introvert (including potentially appearing “maladroit at small talk”)

I’m not an introvert at all. I may actually qualify as an extrovert, haha. However, as I mentioned above, I don’t small-talk. I’m not interested. I’d rather say NOTHING than say (or listen to) nothing interesting. I don’t care about the weather. I don’t care which direction you brush your dog’s hair OR that you even HAVE a dog. At the same time, I don’t want to bore you with things that *I* think are interesting that YOU don’t care about. E-Stalking helps to avoid this, because I know that Charles likes politics and Grace likes food and Annie likes to read books. I know ahead of time what conversations I’m going to get into, so I’m properly prepped for the evening’s events.

2 ) Needing context for conversations

I don’t *need* context, but it’s good to have. It’s way more efficient to walk in the door knowing what someone thinks instead of deciphering it halfway through a conversation. Context is what I was struggling for when I met Melissa. Is she in video? Is she in web design? Is she in finance? If I had heard of her ever in life beforehand, I would have known these things by the time I physically met her and I would have had some intelligent questions/statements. :)

3 ) Wanting to ‘get to know someone’ before engaging them in “inspiring conversation”

I agree with this, entirely. E-Stalking is fantastic for understanding what someone’s passionate about ad how/if their mind works. It’s one thing to say you have a dating blog. However… What are you REALLY talking about? Are you original? Are you regurgitating stuff you see in movies or read on other blogs? Is your material useful to ANYBODY past a basic, surface level of dating idiocy, such as “you messed up, so buy her flowers”? Being able to read people’s material ahead of time saves you from wasting the time, energy and breath of starting a discussion that you quickly find out you’d like to end. :)

Another thing is that people involved in social media are more likely to post something to the net than bring it up IRL. I found out, for instance, that Melissa’s been to China. I would never have asked her about that, because, to me, “travel” falls under the category of small-talk. Besides… I’ve been to ChinaTOWN in NYC, DC, Philly, etc, but actual CHINA never enters my mind as far as a topic of conversation. Since people are more likely to post on the net that they went to China than to blurt it out randomly in an IRL social setting, e-stalking helps you to know who has stories you’d like to hear about places you never plan to go.

4 ) Attempting to form a fairly complete picture of you based on your online thoughtstream

Spot-On. This is one of the best parts of e-stalking! :D You can meet someone IRL so you know how it is to be around them and how they carry themselves and how they speak, smile and laugh… then you get to figure out on your own time and at your own pace what level of interaction you’d like to have with them, going forward. Of course, this works in both directions, haha. Your social media presence could enhance your relationship to someone or delete it entirely. :) Assuming that what you’re posting is a good representation of what you really think or feel, even deletion is a good thing. Social Media allows people to passively opt-out of socialization with someone, due to irreconcilable differences based on personality, activity or philosophy. If someone decides not to like you for some reason, they can carry on that relationship with themselves, and you don’t even have to be aware of it. :)

5 ) Giving the stalkee the respect of wanting to know more about them

This is definitely true. It takes a lot of time to read people’s blogs and watch their videos and read their forum comments and twitter posts and emails. Every minute you devote to someone else’s self-expression on the net is a form of respect, IMO. Then again, it could also be a form of your own personal entertainment, assuming you read blogs of people that you don’t respect yet find entertaining.

6 ) Respecting the time you’ve spent in putting information about yourself on the net &
7 ) Relieving them of redundantly explaining their life story

This was one of the things I really, REALLY enjoyed about starting my own site… as far as business and as far as pleasure. The first time social media hooked me up was when a company wanted me to bring them an editing demo reel, and I was able to point them to the URL to see samples of my work on their own computer screens and I got booked on the spot. I used to waste SOOOOOO much time redundantly telling people what I do. Now, I just point them to my site. My site URL is the same as my name. If you can’t remember my name, google “Bill”. That’s all I have to say. Also, I bring my iPod Nano with me with my video blog on it. I can show you what I do and you can read about the rest of it on the net. Lovely. :)

8 ) Wanting to have a meaningful interaction with the stalkee IRL

This is similar to (3), except once you already know the person. Bre moved from doing videos for Make Magazine to doing videos for Etsy. I learned about it via social media, so when I hung out with him the next time, I asked him about it. It was a much better conversation than the weather or something that we weren’t mutually interested in. It’s useful to have the option to gather this info ahead of time and increases the amount of quality conversation, accelerating people getting to know and appreciate each other.

I think I’ll add my e-stalking reasons in Part 2…